Frayed Knot

Lost in the Met & Jet stuff last night (the three game were coming down to the wire right around the same time - tough night for the remote thumb) was the Rays beating the Yanx on an 11th inning walk-off HR by Reid Brignac which took them into 1st place. Sabathia tossed 8-innings of 2-hit/2-BB/9-K scoreless work while David Price was throwing 8 innings of 3/2/4 shutout ball of his own. Girardi then seemed content to go with his lesser relievers, first Wood, but then Boone Logan, Chad Gaudin, and finally Sergio Mitre who served up the whopper to the first batter he faced. That's 4 straight losses for this Yanx stretch against likely AL playoff teams.

Gee - 4.0 Dessens - 0.5 PFeliciano - 0.5 Takahashi - 1.0 Tejada - 1.5 Evans - 1.2 Davis - 0.5 Wright - 0.3 Reyes - 0.3 Thole - 0.1 Pagan - 0.1

You post that just prior to their winning streak getting snapped. Rox lose 6-4 to SD who jump back into 1st over the idle Giants. Rox were down 5-0 at one point and looked like they were about to pull out another one (they won on a Giambi PH-walk-off-HR this weekend) as they cut it to 5-4 SD SF -0.5 Col -2.5

Probably give it an average-ish grade. Showed me a thing or two about festivals and without any beat us over the head bias of 'waah none of these scum will bow down to our film' But also a bit of overkill at times and while I didn't dislike the film makers themselves they did sometimes run with a bunch of douches.

Edgy DC wrote: I'm not sure what I'm typing anymore. I think one thing and another comes out my fingers. Is Gonzalez a Mormon? Only after he gets traded to Minnesota

---HRsPlaceRBIsPlaceBAPlaceJoey Votto333rd1022nd.3203rdAlbert Pujols391st1041st.3096thCarlos Gonzalez324th1003rd.3371st Just the simple fact that there are three of them in this race makes it even more unlikely than usual that any one will walk away with all three categories. After all, there's a reason no one in baseball has done this in 42 years or in the NL in 73. But it'll be fun to watch down the stretch anyway.

Sure, but I'm also trying not to paint all indie-wannabes with the same brush and those kiosk terrorists weren't, at least as far as I can recall, from the same group making this docu or the movie they were trying to promote, they were just fellow travelers along the same path. The main group did, for the most part I felt, have a sense of humor about their film and their struggles and were in-the-ballpark realistic about portraying the idea that there are simply too many films to fit into too few venues even if cronyism and incompetent festival screeners didn't exist. In fact, had they tried to make it seem like all indie film-makers were pure and good and right while it was nothing less than the meanness of those Nazi-infused corporations that kept their wonderful art from reaching an audience I would have been more apt to dismiss the whole thing as silly propaganda.

metirish wrote: metsguyinmichigan wrote: Speaking of Lou, does anyone else think that his "retirement" will be short-lived? Could he be in a Mets uni finally? For me , if you are going to hire a guy with a big personality with bags of experience and who's Italian then you hire Valentine.... Piniella's heritage is Spanish -- but we get your point. Besides, Lou is 67, not in the best of health, and is, I'm convinced, done for good.

metsguyinmichigan wrote: Speaking of Lou, does anyone else think that his "retirement" will be short-lived? Could he be in a Mets uni finally? Not me.

McCarver said many years ago - like 20 or more - that he thought about going the manager route at one point but conceded that once the booth biz turned out to be so lucrative for him there's no way he'd give up the security of it for the hours & volatility of the dugout. Now at his age (70?) there's not a chance in the world. And "based on things he's said" is nothing more than his current job description. Every announcer is a candidate or wannabe based on that logic and the only one I can think of who went right from the booth to the dugout is Larry Dierker. He was also much younger and the results were mixed at best.

metirish wrote: One of the players that got to third base on a regular basis should be talking up Chip Hale, he was outstanding all year, not many if any fluffed chances right? , and he was aggressive IIRC. Except that there weren't any players who got to 3rd base on a regular basis. Well, maybe some did with chicks they met in bars afterward but that's a totally different subject and has nothing to do with Chip Hale.

ESPN's stats page will let you do stuff like that. You can limit your search by position, league, min ABs, etc. and then sort (up or down) by stat

What this season does is tend to make last year look like more of the aberration and not 2008. In 2008 he dropped to an OPS+ of 102 after a string of years mostly in the 120s & 130s. At age 34 it wouldn't have been irrational to see that as the beginning of the slide towards mediocrity. But the 3rd place MVP year of 2009 tied for his best OPS+ ever (132) other than the career year of 1999 when he turned 25 and it became easier to write off the one so-so season as a fluke. But drop this year's OPS+ = 91 into the mix and suddenly there's two mediocre (or worse) seasons out of the last three which, added to his age, makes the good season the one that seems out of place. Now into that stew toss in the clash between the face-of-the-franchise label and the question about how much the Yanx are willing to (over)spend for goodwill with the perceived ego thing about how much less he's willing to take as compared to ARod and they're in for one interesting negotiation over the winter. In a way the team probably caught a break that the contract wasn't up last year. But, in the meantime, nice sweep by the Rangers. Now it's on to Tampa for three where Sabathia hooks up with Price in game 1.

Yeah, guys who just got rejected from Sundance tend to be a natural audience for films about how it sucks to be rejected from Sundance. The flick itself wasn't bad. Got a bit repetitive in spots -- ... and then we did this festival -- to the point where it could probably be 20 minutes or so shorter while losing nothing. It's also, at times anyway, aimed at kind of a limited audience: when submitting your film to festivals, here's what you should do .... But they did it all with a decent sense of humor and got their point across about how at least some of the system designed to promote true independent films is rigged against true independent films. It also kind of makes me want to see their original film, 'Ten 'til Noon', which, like this one, is also on 'Netflix' so the work kind of serves double duty.

Didn't want to totally ignore the semi-race in the AL Central (even though most people do). The Twinkies have a solid 6-game lead over the ChiSox and the biggest deal might be watching them stay not just on top of their division but put up the 3rd highest number of wins in all baseball while surviving the year-long loss of closer Joe Nathan and the half-season loss of Justin Morneau (hasn't played since July 7th - concussion). A big chunk of the Morneau slack has been taken up by the resurgence of Jim Thome. In what seemed like just an expensive PH pick-up in the pre-season from Chicago, Thome, who turned 40 y/o a few weeks back, has 300+ PAs and is at or near his career averages at BA, OBA & SLG. His 23 HRs shoved him past Palmiero, Killebrew, McGwire, and Frank Robinson up to 8th on the all-time list and put him to within 13 of becoming the 8th member of the 600 club. His 12th inning HR on Saturday was the only run in Minnesota's 1-0 win. Twins & White Sox have once last three-game series left starting Tuesday in Chicago.

Pelfrey - 3.9 Takahashi - 0.7 Davis - 2.8 Reyes - 1.2 JFeliciano - 1.0 Pagan - 0.4

Another 1AM finish - although this one was at least partly due to a rain delay. Still took them 4:16 of playing time to get through a 9-inning game. At least the Frenchy HBP was on the first pitch too with no drama involved. He was in the game after PH-ing earlier and wound up with a 1B, SacFly, and then finally the game-winning HBP. Poor Mariano. Coming off working two innings the night before he just didn't have it. So after the Yanx scored 3 in the 8th to take a 6-5 lead his line read: BB, 1B, 2B, IW, Pop-up, HBP And the Rays romped earlier so the Yanx lead is down to 1/2 game.

Taka-victory

That's three separate double plays today and none of them GiDPs

WOW!! An actual bases-loaded hit!!!!

Dessens - 0.4 Igarashi - 0.4 Beltran - 1.5 Reyes - 1.0 Davis - 1.0 Thole - 1.2 Wright - 0.6

Giants now tied w/the Padres in the West (Giants with one more win but also one extra loss) after they somehow needed six pitchers to throw a 1-0, 3-hit shutout last night. Probably didn't help that starter Jonathan Sanchez walked 7 in just 5 innings and therefore got his ass pulled with a one-hitter going. Rockies romped over Arizona and sit 2.5 out.

I couldn't stay up for the end of the 5:12 abortion that was the Tex/NYY game - finding out only now that Nelson Cruz won it with a leadoff HR in the 13th. One could rationalize the length based on the extra innings but that thing was dragging from the very start. It took them just under an hour just to play the first two innings and it was a 1-0 game at that point. Fun stuff I did see: - Joba the Fat serving up the game-tying HR on the first pitch he threw in the 8th (also Cruz) - Jeter going 1-for-7 (infield single in the 3rd) which deepens his current slump into something like 10 for his last 60-something, .260/.326/.366 for the season and .235/.313/.322 since June 1st It's time to begin wondering if they'll consider dropping him out of the leadoff or 2nd slots in the lineup come playoff time in favor of say Brett Gardner (.388 OBA) or Swisher (.364) or ... hell, just about anyone else. Going to be an interesting contract discussion this winter for sure. Buster Olney said the other day that if you took the name away and just looked at the stats, position & age you'd tag him as a 1-year/$4mil contract Tampa did pick up a game on the Yanx, managing to hold on to a 9-8 win after jumping out to a 6-0 lead in the top of the 1st.